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Boghash
Boghash is a language spoken by the people of Boghash, or Boghash-iri ('iri' means 'people, nation'), one of several peoples inhabiting the island of Munnaya. They're a strongly military nation, and their belief system is centered about the element of fire, and that maight be one of the reasons why they have built their main city in a crater of an extinct volcano. Classification and Dialects There are two main dialects (or, rather, modes of speech), these being the Rraki-lana, lit. 'hard-speech', and Enqu-lana (lit. 'soft-speech'). The first one is spoken mainly in the northern parts of their lands, as well as rural areas and in and out of the City of Boghash. The other dialect is used everywhere else. There are several differences between the two, phonological, but also syntactical and grammatical. Distinctly from those, there are also so-called 'speech modes': Informal, Formal and Book. The Formal mode is used in presence of people with high social status or with strangers, and it uses a somewhat limited set of grammatical forms; The Book mode, as the name suggests, is used only in tales, writings and religious texts; it's the most ancient one, preserving many properties of the older stages of the language's development. Phonology Consonants Vowels Phonotactics Vowels There is no length distinction. Stress patterns depend on several conditions. Diphthongs are formed with a non-close vowel + a close vowel with the same roudness, that is, an a'' might be joined to an ''i, but not an ü''. Consonants Boghash consonants show a very interestnig distinction between so-called ''heavy and light consonants. Every word must be 'balanced', that is, the first and final syllable(s) must have exactly the same weight; that causes some sound changes. Heavy vs Light Consonants Writing System Grammar Nouns Nouns have 4 numbers (Singular, Dual, Paucal, Plural), 12 cases (Nominative, Absolutive, Ablative, Locative, Dative, Distributive, Instrumental, Comitative, Possessed, Privative, Adjectival/Equative, Adverbial/Essive), 5 classes (Fire/holy things, Masculine, Feminine, Neuter/mixed, Abstractions/uncountables), as well as three states of Formality. They are declined in a strongly fusional way, with the ending part changing. There are several declensions. Definitness is marked via the use of 'short demonstratives', corresponding to articles. First declension Only Fire and Masculine classes inflect according to this declension. Inflection of a Class 1 heavy noun zho'arr (fire): To be continued... Inflection of a Class 1 light noun tana (sanctuary, temple): In the Class 2 there are some changes, as seen in this inflection of a heavy noun qärhä (village, small town): ...or this light noun siva (dagger, short sword): Second declension The Second decl. encompasses mostly Feminine class. Third declension This declension covers some Masculine and Neuter class nouns. Fourth declension There are words from all classes that fit into this declension. Fifth declension This one has some Neuter and Abstract class words. Sixth declension This declension actually consists of several sub-declensions for some more rare inflection patterns. Adjectives and adverbs Boghash has several ways of describing words. There are relatively few 'pure adjectives'; mostly, nouns in the Adjectival/Equative case or participles are used in this position. In the function of predicative adjectives there are usually so-called 'stative verbs'; regular adjectives are affixed with a copulative suffix. The adverbs follow the same pattern. Verbs The verbs are much more complicated than nouns, and they are inflected in a rather agglutinative manner. They have 5 tenses (Present, Near Past, Remote Past, Near Future, Remote Future), 3 semi-tenses (Perfect, Imperfect, Prospective), 4 aspects (Indefinite, Durative, Momentane, Repetitive) and 14 moods. They also agree with the object (the subject in intransitive clauses) in Person, Number, and, sometimes, also Class and Formality. There are also 3 voices: Active, Passive and Antipassive. Every (nearly) Boghash verb has 4 stem forms: Affirmative and Negative, both in Main and Subordinate variants. Syntax Boghash is rather head-final, so it prefers OSV (at least in the Hard Speech) word order, as well as postpositions to prepositions. Adjectives stand before nouns they modify rather than after them (the same applies to adverbs). Lexicon Example text Category:Languages